Before Chris Meaux started Waitr, he was living in a quiet area of the Dallas Metroplex called Southlake in the early 2010s. But he realized that there was something lacking in small markets like his at the time — big food delivery players such as Grubhub.
Then he moved to another smaller market — Lake Charles, Louisiana — and realized there was a potential for food delivery outside big cities. In all, he identified 422 cities as potential markets.
They all had something in common: Each is a small to mid-sized market with a population between 75,000 and 750,000. And when he finally launched Waitr, that was its sweet spot.